


Thunder on Shuffle

by volti



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fade to Black, I'm Sorry, Implied Sexual Content, No Spoilers, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing Headphones, Shinjiro's SL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 05:25:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18004655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volti/pseuds/volti
Summary: “I didn’t think you wereactuallygonna stay,” he says.Aha. A bluff she didn’t realize she was calling. “I mean…” She scrunches up her lips, looks around at the bare walls and empty shelves. “If this is uncomfortable—if youwantme to go upstairs, I can—”“You said you weren’t goin’ anywhere,” he says, with a pointed look and his hands flexing at her sides, like they’re aching to do more than just rest there. “So don’t, if you don’t want to.”Which, in Shinjiro’s sort-of-convoluted zero-to-one-hundred language, means,I don’t want you to go.---Minako spent "a lot of time" with Shinjiro the night before October 4th. Here's what happened.





	Thunder on Shuffle

**Author's Note:**

> i have nothing to say except that it's 2019 and i'm saying shinjiham rights!!!!!!! who's gonna stop me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know, when Shinjiro said he wasn’t going to hold back on her, she wasn’t exactly expecting… this.

Then again, Minako’s probably been influenced—though she can’t really tell whether it’s for good or for bad—by all those teenage dramas and books and stuff. She’s been reading them for years, and most of the time she’s not afraid to admit it. Usually when a guy says he’s not going to hold back, the lights flick off, and the hands and mouths go everywhere, and there’s, like, at least one piece of clothing on the floor and bodies against the wall by the end of the scene. And then there’s gossip about it the next day, maybe, and Minako knows for a fact she’s not above that, fiction or no. She’s been practically vibrating for the last half-hour, waiting to bound up the stairs and tell Yukari absolutely everything.

She would, if she didn’t insist Shinjiro she wasn’t going anywhere.

But then, she was sort of expecting it, too, considering the way Shinjiro all but scooped her up in his arms—maybe too long for him, definitely not long enough for her. How he told her she was all he could think about day and night, how walking out of his room was the last chance he was going to get. How was she _not_ supposed to interpret that as some kind of… some kind of _affair_?

Wishful thinking, at its finest.

Maybe she should have known better. All this time, she’s known Shinjiro swings between zero and a hundred. Between “women complicate everything” and “your face keeps popping into my head.” Between “you don’t know enough about me to _really_ like me” and “kid, open the door, please.” Between “go back to your room” and “I’m not holding back.” Maybe she just thought he was at ninety-nine long enough for something in him to snap.

Maybe she just wanted him to be there.

All they’ve been doing now, really, is sitting on his squeaky, old-fashioned bed. The closest they’ve gotten to… anything… is that she’s sitting in his lap, with a knee on either side of his hips, and he hasn’t wanted to hold her anywhere lower than the waist. Which is, admittedly, better than just sitting on the floor and talking about nothing—one, because she knows her butt would be sore by the end of it, and two, because it’d be annoyingly stiff after the way he dared to embrace her. 

She wishes he’d do it again. She really, really does. Once or twice she’s thought that maybe she _is_ better off just going back to his room without so much as another hug goodnight, that maybe she really _is_ making him uncomfortable, but the instant she shifts his grip on her tightens, and it must be entirely out of his control, because he coughs and looks away with a rumble of an apology in his throat.

Minako parts her lips to speak, but she barely gets out the first syllable of the honorific before Shinjiro flicks his gaze to her, eyes blazing. “I didn’t think you were _actually_ gonna stay,” he says.

Aha. A bluff she didn’t realize she was calling. “I mean…” She scrunches up her lips, looks around at the bare walls and empty shelves. “If this is uncomfortable—if you _want_ me to go upstairs, I can—”

“You said you weren’t goin’ anywhere,” he says, with a pointed look and his hands flexing at her sides, like they’re aching to do more than just rest there. “So don’t, if you don’t want to.”

Which, in Shinjiro’s sort-of-convoluted zero-to-one-hundred language, means, _I don’t want you to go._ It’s a baby step compared to the beginning of the month, but honestly, she’ll take it. She smiles, and tilts her head so she knows he can see it. “Then I won’t.”

His hand is shaky when it reaches up, and her breath hitches. Is he going to cradle her cheek or something? Maybe try to pull her in for a kiss? God, she’s been waiting for this for ages, to the point that she’s dreamt about it more times than she’s unashamed to admit, to the point that her mouth gets kind of tingly whenever she thinks about how he might taste—

Instead, he fingers the wire of one of the headphones dangling down her neck, and juts his lip out. “You have these on you all the time, huh?”

Minako shrugs, and tries not to look too disappointed. Tries. “Sometimes the world gets too loud. I don’t want to listen to it all the time. You know?”

“Yeah. I know.” Shinjiro’s expression softens, and he thumbs the back of one of the earbuds. That’s the thing about him; he gets her in the littlest ways, the ways she figures other people wouldn’t. It’s how he gets inside her brain as much as he does, for as long as he does. Maybe that’s the thing about her for him, too, but she’s ninety-nine percent sure he’s never laid back in bed on a Sunday morning with his hands to his heart or his cheek, imagining they’re her hands instead, or that she’s on top of him. And she’s a hundred percent sure she’ll never admit that to him. At least not tonight. “What d’you listen to? Seems like you’re always blastin’ something when you walk in.”

“Oh, uh—” Minako clears her throat, shyly rubs the back of her neck and fumbles with the music player in her pocket. “Lots of stuff.” Little by little, she unwraps the headphones from her neck, and holds one out to him. “Want to hear?”

Shinjiro sits back against the headboard, looking her up and down with one of those _you gotta be kidding me_ expressions, and then grunts in agreement, motioning for her to hand the bud over. He looks like he could drill holes into her with his gaze—which is kind of how he usually looks at her—but he blinks a couple of times in surprise when she takes up the other bud and hits play.

“Thunderstorms, huh.”

Minako’s face grows hot, and she looks down and presses her thumbs hard against the screen. “They help me fall asleep,” she says, too quiet and even embarrassed to be considered a defense. Even with the rumble in her ear that almost instantly relaxes her shoulders. “I can’t sleep without noise.”

“Well, you’re just a walking contradiction, aren’t you.”

“I’m _picky,_ ” she insists, but Shinjiro’s already waving it away with a hand and the threat of a smile, folding his hands against his abdomen. He closes his eyes, and he listens with her to every muted crackle, the pitter-patter of hard rain and the boom of thunder she can feel at the base of her chest. And for a while, it doesn’t feel so bad to be at ninety-nine. It makes it easier to understand him in all this space—the wideness around them and what lies between them. She can sit here instead, and study the wrinkles and the dark circles at the corners of his eyes, the frown his lips practically default to. How he looks like he could fall asleep like this, and probably needs to, with all the work they’ve been putting in during the Dark Hour. And the way his hands look so cold and callused and weathered and frail, within reach, how they’re itching to be touched.

How she’s itching to hold them.

It’s far more tame than the way he embraced her earlier, but it doesn’t feel any less risky. She bites her lip, takes a breath, chest tightening at a sudden clap in her ear—and brushes her fingertips against his knuckles on the decrescendo. They’re just as cold as she thought—not _freezing_ , but enough that she wants to warm them with her hands, with her breath. Maybe it’s true, what they say about cold hands and warm hearts. It’s the most he’ll probably allow her, and definitely the most she’ll allow herself. Baby steps, again. “Hey,” she murmurs, long after her breath hitches and she gets back her bearings. “Sen—” 

“Shinjiro.” He opens one eye, but otherwise doesn’t move. “Call me Shinjiro.”

“Okay,” she says. “Shinjiro.”

He tilts his head down and clears his throat unceremoniously; the edge of his beanie shades the way he averts his gaze, but it doesn’t do much to hide the pink blossoming across his cheeks. It’s… _cute._ “Yeah.”

“Can I… I mean…” She wrings her hands and looks around the room again. It’s not supposed to be this hard to ask for what she wants. It’s not supposed to be so hard to spill her feelings when they’re like this. When they’ve been alone for so long, and spent so much time together over the last month—only a month. That would explain everything. “Would you want to… I mean, could you—”

“Spit it out,” he says, both eyes open now, his fingers pressing hard into the spaces between his knuckles. “If you want somethin’, just say so.”

It’s hard to get the words out when she’s biting her lip as hard as she is, but if he can do it, so can she. “Can you hold me closer?”

He sputters, which is exactly what she expected him to do, but he doesn’t look away from her. The storm is still raging in their ears, soothing in spite of the blood pounding so loud it almost drowns out the rain. Eventually, he gives her a slow nod and a vague hand gesture, and slips from pink to red. “Yeah. C’mere.”

Minako smiles so widely it almost hurts her face. She scoots closer to him, still unsure of how comfortable he is or wants to get, but takes the risk of wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder, still straddling him. If she were a little shorter—well, first of all, she’d kind of resent it, because she’s already pretty short as it is. But second, she’d be able to hear his heartbeat, and honestly, that alone would probably make it worth it. She takes a deep breath, mostly to calm herself for being so close to him—again—and he smells… _good._ Like pine, or spices or something. She didn’t notice it before, mostly because she was too busy being shocked, but there’s something easier about this. Something that makes it all worth reveling in.

At first, Shinjiro keeps his hands at a distance, and then starts to pat her back gingerly, like he’s burping a baby. He mumbles to stop making fun of him when she muffles a giggle in his sweater, but she can’t help it; it’s kind of adorable, how he’s trying, how he’s getting used to it all. It doesn’t take him long to splay his hand across her back, carefully tracing his fingertips up and down her spine, and that, _that’s_ what makes her crumple against him. That’s what makes her melt and press even closer to him. Like she’d crawl inside him if she could.

This is a good ninety-nine.

Shinjiro sighs, and she all but sinks into his chest as he heaves. “You can _not_ be comfortable like this, kid.”

“I’m _Minako,_ ” she insists to almost no avail. And then his arm is curling under her thighs, and he’s maneuvering her so easily, so she’s still in his lap and her side is leaning against his chest and he’s sort of cradling her in his arm and now, now she can actually hear his heartbeat. And it’s _thundering_.

And it’s exciting. Being so close. Being held like this, being… _handled_ , like this. It’s no surprise her heart is pounding, too, right in time with his.

“What are you thinking about?” she ventures to ask. Wonders if he can hear her; she can barely hear herself.

Shinjiro’s arm tenses against her back, and is slow to relax again. “Lots of stuff,” he says. “This. Tomorrow. A lot.”

“And by this, you mean…?”

He sighs. “You really wanna make me say it, huh.”

“A little.”

He pauses, like he’s trying to get his words together, get them right. “You,” he says. His voice cracks and sounds dry, and it might be because he’s nervous, or because he’s gotten into that bad habit of not drinking enough water again. “I’m thinkin’ about how you’re not leaving.”

There’s a twinge in her heart, but Minako tries to laugh it off among the rain. “You mean how I’m annoying and won’t stay out of your way?”

“No,” Shinjiro breathes. “You’re not annoying anymore.”

“ _Anymore._ ”

“You’re here,” he says, “and you’re not goin’ anywhere.”

Minako can’t tell if it’s supposed to sound ominous, or if he’s reassuring himself. If he’s telling himself that she’s woven herself so tightly into his life that he doesn’t want to remember what it feels like when it unravels. “Yeah,” she murmurs, flexing her hand and reaching out to slide her fingers between his, surprised when he curls in and gives her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m here. I said it myself, right? I’m not going anywhere.”

He grunts again, but this time it sounds more thoughtful, like a hum. His hand twitches, still in hers. “Full moon tomorrow, huh.”

“Sure is.”

“You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Good,” he says. “That’s good.” And then his hand is slipping out of hers, reaching up to ease the bobby pins out of her hair, one by one, before tugging her scrunchie out and letting her hair spill down her shoulders. She can’t remember the last time she kept her hair loose, but his eyes are sparking again as he puts the accessories aside. “Looks nice,” he finally admits, and shakily tucks it back behind her ear. “Dunno why you don’t wear it like that more often.”

His hand is so. Goddamn. Close. And he isn’t looking away. She’d be stupid not to do something, but for all she knows, he’s just going to pull his hand back and pretend nothing happened. And they’ll keep listening to whatever’s on shuffle until time turns over to the Dark Hour, and out again, and maybe she’ll walk out of this room at five past midnight with too many regrets in her pocket. And the want, it’s there, building in her chest and her shoulders, flooding her brain, _don’t think, just do it, just do something_ —

In her ear, the thunder and rain start to fade, leaving nothing but the ringing that comes with sudden silence and the urge that never really goes away. In the quiet, Shinjiro pulls his hand back, and Minako forgets how to think, pulls him forward with his face in both hands and kisses him because she thinks she might die if she doesn’t.

His lips are cool like the rest of him, and a little chapped, but she melts anyway. Holds him for as long as she can and urges him to move his lips against hers. She’d put a hand on his heart—or, really, move at all—if she weren’t so afraid of what he might do next. The words are already on her tongue when she pulls back. “I—I’m sorry, I just, I wanted to—”

“Stop talking,” Shinjiro growls, rips the earbuds away and sets the music player aside, and wraps her up in another kiss. She can feel the needle ease over to one hundred, like a second hand turning over to the next hour, and she breathes in all those pine and spices again, swears that maybe, when he parts his lips, she can taste it on his tongue. That maybe she can feel one hundred in how his hands tremble at the small of her back and in her hair, or how he hums just barely audibly into her mouth, or how he doesn’t mind at all when she plucks his beanie off his head and flings it across the room. She’s not even sure the ringing in her ears is from the lack of sound anymore; she’s pretty sure it’s all the blood rushing to her head. Or the fact that he only breaks the kiss to catch his breath, and stays close enough that she can feel each one against her lips, before he’s on her again.

 _Now_ , she thinks, it’s a drama. This is what the TV cuts to: this unbridled, untouchable thing that lives between them and only shows itself in the tugs at her scalp and her bow tie, or the mouth at her neck and the fists in the back of her blouse, and the way Shinjiro’s voice sounds like thunder when he says, “I _said_ I wasn’t gonna go easy on you.” It just doesn’t show how dizzy and wild he makes her feel when her hair curtains their faces, or the way he almost stumbles when he flips her onto her back and crawls over her, or how no matter how often he says he’s not going to hold back, she’ll say right back that she doesn’t want him to. On TV, he’d have at her, and the scene would cut with a closeup of her face or her hand on his abs and the sound of her gasp. Now, he… he stops. And he lets go of her thighs like he’s been burnt, and he stares down at her, like…

Like he feels guilty, for wanting.

Should she feel guilty, too?

“Shinjiro?” she manages, and he seems to snap back to himself, lacing his fingers between hers to pin her hands to the bed and leaning down close.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop talking?” He doesn’t say in a way that scares her, or _should_ scare her. He says it in a way that burns in the pit of her stomach and makes her shiver all at once. A way she wants to hear more often than just tonight. A way that maybe says, _You really do love me, huh?_

“Yeah.” She says it to both, daring to lazily sling her legs around his waist for just a little more struggle. Just a little more control. “But maybe I don’t want to play by all your rules. Maybe…” Her heart catches in her throat, and she has to swallow it back down. “Maybe I just… want… you.”

Shinjiro tenses up then; he probably wasn’t expecting her to say that. To be fair, she wasn’t expecting _herself_ to say it either. But his throat dips with a deep swallow, and he murmurs, “You stopped playing by the rules the minute you said you weren’t goin’ anywhere.” And whatever inhibitions he had must have disappeared, because he’s kissing her again, hard enough to press her into the mattress. His hands flex at her wrists, plant themselves at her sides, and he’s unraveling her from his body, shifting back, back, down, down, knocking the breath from her just from his nails biting into her skin or catching over her clothes.

There’s some leftover thunder in her now. She can feel it as she props herself up onto her elbows, watches him kneel back on the floor. “What are you doing?”

Shinjiro’s eyes flash—they’ve been doing that far more often lately, far more dangerously—and amid the tinny blast of music from her headphones, his hands find a home on her knees, just above her socks. “Somethin’ for all your trouble,” he says, like it’s the closest to playful he’s ever going to get. He sounds like he’s halting—not like he’s pushing himself through what he doesn’t want, but like he’s learning how to open himself up to what he does want so badly it might kill him. Ticking to a hundred and one, because they can’t afford to be afraid to. “Somethin’ you deserve.”

“A…” She pauses, even squirms a little. “A preview?”

“Yeah,” he breathes, ragged, taking hold of her hands again and burying his face beneath her skirt. “Call it a preview.”

Here’s the gasp.

Here’s the cut.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/omnistruck) and a [Tumblr](http://voltisubito.tumblr.com); follow me there for more shenanigans! Feel free to leave comments and stuff in my askbox as well c:
> 
> Let me know if you liked this!! I'm always happy to write more for this fandom (and will probably do it anyway because really, who's gonna stop me), but it helps to know there are other folks out there who'd want it!


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